Chapter XIX: “the Sun” and Yellow Journalism (1)

_The Coming and Going of a Newspaper Disease.--Dana’s Attitude
Toward President Cleveland.--Dana’s Death.--Ownerships of Paul
Dana, Laffan, Reich, and Munsey._

Of such things as we have mentioned here, putting into the necessary news, attractively written, a proper seasoning of regional colour and atmosphere, humour and pathos, the _Sun_ has been made since Dana came to it. He created a new journalism, but it was a decent and distinct kind, appealing to the intellect rather than to the passions. It gave room for the honest expression of everybody’s opinion, from Herbert Spencer to _Chimmie Fadden_. Because of this, because he had lifted American newspaper work out of the dust of tradition, Dana had a holy anger when a newer journalism tried to throw it into the mud.

When Henry Watterson was called as an expert witness in proceedings to appraise the estate of Joseph Pulitzer, in 1914, the veteran editor of the Louisville _Courier-Journal_ made an interesting statement on this subject:

There is much confusion in the public mind about what is known
as “yellow journalism.” There have been several periods of
it in New York. James Gordon Bennett was the first yellow
journalist, and Charles A. Dana was the second. Mr. Pulitzer
was the third. Finally, when Mr. Hearst came along, he was
the fourth, and I think he quite filled the field of yellow
journalism.

As Mr. Bennett became more respectable and Mr. Dana more fixed
in his efforts, they were raised in the public estimation. So
was Mr. Pulitzer. I think the field of yellow journalism is so
filled by the Hearst newspapers that they no more compete with
the _World_ than with the _Herald_ or the _Sun_.

Mr. Watterson did not define yellow journalism. Perhaps he considered it broadly as sensational journalism. The elder Bennett was sensational to the extent that he printed things which the sixpenny papers of his time did not print. He made the interview popular, and he was the first editor to see the value of paying attention to financial news.

So far as printing human news is concerned, Benjamin H. Day worked that field before Bennett started the _Herald_. If Mr. Watterson considered Dana a yellow journalist, what else was Day, with his stories about the sodden things of the police-courts, or his description of Miss Susan Allen smoking a cigar and dancing in Broadway?

Printing a diagram of the scene of a murder, with a big black X to mark the spot where the victim was found, did not make the _World_ a yellow newspaper, for Amos Cummings began to print murder charts as soon as he became managing editor of the _Sun_. Putting black-faced type over a story on the front page did not make the _World_ or the _Journal_ yellow, for Cummings, when he was on the _Tribune_, was the first to use big type in head-lines, and the _Tribune_ was never accused of yellowness.

If pictures made a paper yellow, Dana was not yellow, for he used few illustrations in the news pages of the paper. Again, if head-lines indicate yellowness, Dana must be acquitted of being a yellow journalist; for the head-lines of the _Sun_, from the first year of Dana’s control until after his death, remained practically unchanged, and were conservative to the last degree.

Head-lines and pictures, so far as their sensational attraction was concerned, meant nothing to Dana. He was not yellow, but white and alive. The distinction was clearly explained by Mr. Mitchell:

Remember the difference between white and yellow. The essential
difference is not of method or quality of product, but of
purpose and of moral responsibility or moral debasement.
Yellow will tell you that it means force, originality, and
independence in the presentation of ideas. This is consolatory
to yellow, but not accurate. Yellow will print an interesting
exaggeration or misstatement, knowing it to be such. If in
doubt about the truth of alleged news, but in no doubt whatever
as to its immediate value as a sensation, yellow will give the
benefit of the doubt to the sensation every time, and print it
with head-lines tall enough to reach to Saturn. White won’t;
that is the only real color test. I hope you are all going to
be white, and not only white, but red, white, and blue.

No yellow journalist he, Dana! To paraphrase Webster, he smote the rock of humanity, and abundant streams of literature rushed forth. If he startled, he startled the intellect, not the eye. His appeals were to the intelligence, the soul, the risibilities of man, and not to his primitive passions. He believed that all the information, the philosophy, and the humour of the world could be conveyed through the type of a daily newspaper as surely as and much more broadly than they had been conveyed through the various mediums of the old newspapers, the encyclopedias, the novels, the pulpit, and the lecture platform.

When Dana attacked yellow journalism--the expressive phrase was fastened in the language by Ervin Wardman, in the _Press_--it was in the firm belief that this new journalism, the “journalism that did things,” was doing the wrong thing; that it was breaking down the magnificent structure that had been reared by himself and Greeley and Raymond and Bennett and Hurlbut. This group had been possessed of all the newspaper faculties and facilities. If yellow journalism had been right, they would have raised it to its highest peak. Dana, who knew better than any editor of his time what the public wanted, could have produced a perfect yellow _Sun_; but he chose to print a golden one. He wrought more genuine journalistic advance than any other man in history. As Mr. Mitchell wrote of him in _McClure’s Magazine_ in October, 1894, three years before Mr. Dana’s death:

The revolution which his genius and invention have wrought in
the methods of practical journalism in America during the past
twenty-five years can be estimated only by newspaper-makers.
His mind, always original, and unblunted and unwearied at
seventy-five, has been a prolific source of new ideas in the
art of gathering, presenting, and discussing attractively the
news of the world.

He is a radical and unterrified innovator, caring not a copper
for tradition or precedent when a change of method promises a
real improvement. Restlessness like his, without his genius,
discrimination, and honesty of purpose, scatters and loses
itself in mere whimsicalities or pettinesses; or else it
deliberately degrades the newspaper upon which it is exercised.

To Mr. Dana’s personal invention are due many, if not most,
of the broad changes which within a quarter of a century have
transformed journalism in this country. From his individual
perception of the true philosophy of human interest, more
than from any other single source, have come the now general
repudiation of the old conventional standards of news
importance; the modern newspaper’s appreciation of the news
value of the sentiment and humor of the daily life around
us; the recognition of the principle that a small incident,
interesting in itself and well told, may be worth a column’s
space, when a large, dull fact is hardly worth a stickful’s;
the surprising extension of the daily newspaper’s province so
as to cover every department of general literature, and to take
in the world’s fancies and imaginings as well as its actual
events.

The word “news” has an entirely different significance from
what it possessed twenty-five or thirty years ago under the
ancient common law of journalism as derived from England;
and in the production of this immense change, greatly in
the interest of mankind and of the cheerfulness of daily
life, it would be difficult to exaggerate the direct and
indirect influence of Mr. Dana’s alert, scholarly, and widely
sympathetic perceptions.

WILLIAM C. REICK
]

The assaults which Dana made upon yellow journalism were not actuated by the jealous envy of one who has himself overlooked an opportunity. Everything that the _Sun_ attacked in yellow newspapers was something to which the _Sun_ itself never would have stooped--the faked or distorted interview, the product of the thief or the eavesdropper, the collection of back-stairs gossip, the pilfered photograph, the revelation of personal affairs beyond the public’s business, the arrogation of official authority, the maudlin plea for sympathy in a factitious cause, the gross exaggeration for sensation’s sake of a trifling occurrence, the appeal to sensualism, and the demagogic attack upon the rich.

Right endures, and where is yellow journalism? Gone where the woodbine twineth. Its prototype, the wild ass, stamps o’er its head and cannot break its sleep. The “journalism that does things” doesn’t do anything any more except to try and teach its men to write articles the way the _Sun_ has been printing them since 1868. In a chart of new journalism the largest, blackest X-mark would show where the body of new journalism, slain by public taste, lies buried forever.

The New York _World_, once the most ingenious exponent of yellow journalism, has become as conservative as the _Sun_ was in the days when Joseph Pulitzer worked for Dana. Mr. Hearst’s papers, once the deepest of all yellows, now hold up their hands in horror when they see, beside them on the news-stands, the bold, black head-lines of the _Evening Post_!

Yellow journalism said to its readers:

“This way to the big show! We have a mutilated corpse, a scandal in high life, divorce details that weren’t brought out in court, a personal attack on the mayor, lifelike pictures of dead rats, the memoirs of a demented dressmaker, some neatly invented prison horrors, and a general denunciation of everybody who owns more than five hundred dollars. Don’t miss it!”

Dana said to his readers:

“Come, let me show you the clean stream of life; the newsboy with the trained dog, the new painting at the Metropolitan Museum, an Arabian restaurant on the East Side, the new Governor at Albany, the latest theory of planetary control, one book by Old Sleuth and another by Henry James, a ghost in a Berkshire tavern and an authentic recipe for strawberry shortcake, a clown who reads Molière and a king who plays pinochle, a digest of ten volumes of history and the shortest complete poem (“This bliz knocks biz”) ever written, a dark tragedy in the Jersey pines and a plan for a new subway, a talk with the Grand Lama and a home-run by Roger Connor, a panic in Wall Street and a poor little girl who finds a quarter.”

In the long run--and it did not have to be very long--the more attractive offering was permanently chosen by newspaper-readers.

The curious effect on American journalism of the conflict between _Sun_ methods and the so-called new journalism was referred to, in an address delivered at Yale University on January 12, 1903, by Frank A. Munsey, then owner of the New York _Daily News_ and now proprietor of the _Sun_:

The newspaperman of to-day is a composite type, the product
of the _Sun_ and the New York _World_ of fifteen or eighteen
years ago. These two newspapers represented two distinct and
widely different styles of journalism. The _World_ was alert,
daring, aggressive, and sensational. It was about the liveliest
thing that ever swung into New York from the West.... No man
has ever stamped himself more thoroughly upon his generation
than has Joseph Pulitzer on the journalism of America. He was
the originator and the founder of our present type of overgrown
newspaper, with its illustrations and its merits and its
defects.

The part the _Sun_ played in this recreating and rejuvenating
of the American press was purely literary. It was the first
newspaper to make fiction out of facts--that is, to handle
facts with the skill and manner of the novelist, so that they
read like fiction and possessed all its charm and fascination.
The _Sun_ at that time consisted of but four pages, and I am
convinced that it was the best example of newspaper-making ever
produced anywhere. With the exception of one or two of these
fiction-fact stories so charmingly told, it was the perfection
of condensation, accuracy, brilliancy.

Mr. Munsey did not say, because it was not germane to his subject, that for fourteen years before the advent of Pulitzer, Dana had been demonstrating the news value of the human-interest story, and that it was almost entirely upon the human-interest story, twisted and exaggerated, that yellow journalism was founded. Mr. Munsey did not say, for he could not know, that fifteen years after his address at Yale the new journalism would be extinct and the _Sun_ would be still the _Sun_. The editors of to-day do not ask a reporter whether he can climb a porch or photograph an unwilling person, but whether he can see news and write it.

An adequate history of the _Sun’s_ political activities during Dana’s time would fill volumes. Rather than the editor of an organ of the opposition, Dana was usually an opposition party in himself; not merely for the sake of opposition, but because the parties in power from 1869 to 1897 usually happened to have practices or principles with which he, as the editor of the _Sun_, was in disagreement. His attacks on the Grant administration for the thievery that spotted it, and on the Hayes administration because of the circumstances under which Mr. Hayes came to the Presidential chair, were bitter and without relent. His opposition to Grover Cleveland, an intellectual rather than a personal war, began before Mr. Cleveland was a national figure. In September, 1882, when the hitherto obscure Buffalonian was nominated for Governor of New York, the _Sun_ said:

It is usually not a wise thing in politics, any more than in
war, to take a private from the ranks and at one bound to
promote him to be commander-in-chief; yet that is what has been
done in the case of Grover Cleveland.

In the Presidential campaign of 1884 the _Sun_ would not support Cleveland and could not support Blaine, whose conduct in Congress the _Sun_ had frequently condemned; so it advocated the hopeless cause of General Benjamin F. Butler, who had been elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1882, the year when Cleveland was chosen Governor of New York. Dana was not an admirer of Butler’s spectacular army career, or of his general political leanings, but he admired him for his attitude in the Hayes-Tilden scandal, and he believed that Butler, if elected President, would shake things up in Washington. The _Sun_ supported him “as a man to be immensely preferred to either of the others and as a protest against such nominations.” Dana personally announced that sooner than support Blaine he would quit work and burn his pen.

In 1885, opposing Cleveland’s free-trade policy, the _Sun_ vigorously supported Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, a protectionist Democrat, for speaker of the House, as against John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, a free-trader; but Randall was beaten.

The _Sun_ ridiculed Cleveland’s theories of civil-service reform, although it believed that real reforms were needed. On this point Dana wrote, in a letter:

I do not believe in the establishment in this country of
the German bureaucratic system, with its permanent staff of
office-holders who are not responsible to the people, and whose
tenure of place knows no variation and no end except the end of
life. In my judgment a genuine reform of the evils complained
of is reached by the vigorous simplification of the machinery
of government, by the repeal of all superfluous laws, the
abolition of every needless office, and the dismissal of every
needless officer. The true American doctrine on this subject
consists in the diminution of government, not in its increase.

For all of its opposition to Cleveland, whom it dubbed the “stuffed prophet,” the _Sun_ preferred him to General Harrison in the campaign of 1888. It feared a return to power of the influences which it had combated during the administrations of Grant and Hayes. Four years afterward, however, the _Sun_ was strongly against the third nomination of Cleveland.

In Mr. Cleveland’s second term the _Sun_ supported his course when Dana believed it to be American. While at first it considered the President too mild and conciliatory in matters of foreign policy, it praised him and his Secretary of State, Richard Olney, for their stand against Great Britain in the Venezuela boundary dispute; praised them just as heartily as it had condemned Mr. Cleveland’s earlier action in the Hawaiian matter, when the President withdrew the treaty of annexation which his predecessor had sent to the Senate.

The _Sun’s_ most deadly weapon, ridicule, was constantly in play in the years of the Hawaiian complications. It found vulnerable spots in Mr. Cleveland’s re-establishment of the deposed Queen Liliuokalani and in the President’s sending of a commissioner--“Paramount” Blount, as the _Sun_ called him--without the advice and consent of the Senate. As jealous then as it is to-day of any raid by the Executive upon the Constitution or the powers of Congress, the _Sun_ had the satisfaction of a complete victory in the Hawaiian matter.

On the other hand, the _Sun_ applauded Mr. Cleveland’s attitude on the money question and his brave stand against the mob in the Chicago railway strikes of 1894, when the President used troops to prevent the obstruction of the mails by Eugene V. Debs and his followers.

Dana was seventy-seven years old when William J. Bryan--whom the _Sun_ had already immortalized as the Boy Orator of the Platte--was nominated for the Presidency in 1896, but the veteran editor went at the task of exposing the free-silver fallacy with the same blithe vigour that he had shown twenty years before. His opinion, printed in the _Sun_ of August 6, 1896, is a good example of Dana’s clear style:

The Chicago platform invites us to establish a currency which
will enable a man to pay his debts with half as much
property as he would have to use in order to pay them now. This
proposition is dishonest. I do not say that all the advocates
of the free coinage of silver are dishonest. Thousands of
them--millions, if there be so many--are doubtless honest in
intention. But I am unable to reconcile with any ideal of
integrity a change in the law which will permit a man who has
borrowed a hundred dollars to pay his debt with a hundred
dollars each one of which is worth only half as much as each
dollar he received from the lender.

FRANK A. MUNSEY
]

Dana’s opinions on political questions were more eagerly sought than those of any other editor after Greeley’s death, and the _Sun’s_ political news was complete; yet with Dana, and with the _Sun_, politics was, after all, only one small part of life. The whole world, with its facts and fancies, not the political problems of one continent, was the real field to be covered.

Dana’s curiosity was all-embracing. After the _Sun’s_ financial success was assured he went abroad frequently, and saw not only western Europe, but Russia and the Levant. Of these he wrote in his “Eastern Journeys.” He knew a dozen languages. He conversed with the Pope about Dante and with Russian peasants about Tolstoy. His knowledge of Spanish, acquired early in life, made easy his travels in Mexico and Cuba. Everywhere he went he talked of freedom with its friends, and encouraged them. He knew Kossuth, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Clémenceau, Marti, and Parnell.

At home, Dana’s amusements were chiefly literary and artistic--the study of languages, history, and _belles-lettres_, the collection of pottery and pictures. His Chinese porcelains were perhaps the best, in point of quality, in the Occident.

“I am persuaded,” one critic said of them, “that Mr. Dana must have had a most profound instinct in relation to the whole subject.”

After Mr. Dana’s death these porcelains, about four hundred in number, were sold at auction for nearly two hundred thousand dollars.

In winter Dana lived in a large house which he built in 1880 at the corner of Madison Avenue and Sixtieth Street, and which held the art treasures that he began to gather in the first days of his prosperity. Here he kept his pictures, notably some fine specimens of the Barbizon school, and his books, which included some rare volumes, but which in the main were chosen for their usefulness.

Dana’s happiest days were spent at his country place, Dosoris, an island near Glen Cove, on the north shore of Long Island. There, around a large, old-fashioned, square frame house, he made roads and flower-beds and planted trees from many parts of the world. He grew an oak from an acorn that was brought from the tomb of Confucius. He knew Gray’s “Botany” almost by heart, and could give an intimate description of every flower in the Dosoris gardens. His interest in plants was so deep that once, while travelling in Cuba with an eminent painter, he led his companion for hours through the hot hills of Vuelta Abajo in order to satisfy himself that a certain variety of pine did _not_ grow in that region.

Dana’s was a normal, healthy life. He was a good horseman and swimmer and a great walker. When he was seventy-five years old he climbed to the top of Croyden Mountain, in New Hampshire, with a party of younger men puffing behind him. He found pleasure in all of life, whether it was at the office, where he worked steadily but not feverishly, or with his family among the rural delights of Dosoris, or surrounded by congenial literary spirits at the dinner-table.

He knew no illness until his last summer. Up to June, 1897, the sturdy figure and the kindly face framed in a white beard were as familiar to the _Sun_ office as they were in the seventies. With Dana there was no slow decay of body or mind. He died at Dosoris on October 17, 1897, in the thirtieth year of his reign over the _Sun_.

A few years before, on observing an obituary paragraph which Mr. Dana had written about some noted man, John Swinton asked his chief how much space he (Swinton) would get when his time came.

“For you, John, two sticks,” said Mr. Dana. Turning to Mr. Mitchell, then his chief editorial writer, he added: “For me, two lines.”

On the morning after Mr. Dana’s death every newspaper but one in New York printed columns about the career of the dean of American journalism. The _Sun_ printed only ten words, and these were carried at the head of the first editorial column, without a heading:

CHARLES ANDERSON DANA, editor of the _Sun_, died yesterday
afternoon.

Mr. Swinton perhaps believed that Mr. Dana was joking when he said “two lines,” but Mr. Mitchell knew that his chief was in earnest. The order was characteristic of Dana. It was not false modesty. Perhaps it was a certain fine vanity that told him what was true--that he and his work were known throughout the land; that the _Sun_, in its perfection the product of his genius and vigour, would continue to rise as regularly as its celestial namesake; that all he had done would live on. He had made the paper so great that the withdrawal from it of one man’s hand was negligible.

Dana was gone, but his son remained as principal owner, and his chief writer and most intimate intellectual associate for twenty years was left to form the _Sun’s_ policies as he had moulded them in Dana’s absences and as he shapes them to-day. His publisher, the astute Laffan, was still in charge of the _Sun’s_ financial affairs. Other men whom he had found and trained, like Frank P. Church, Mayo W. Hazeltine, and Edward M. Kingsbury in the editorial department, and Chester S. Lord and Daniel F. Kellogg in the news department, continued their work as if Dana still lived.

With their grief doubt was not mingled. The _Sun’s_ success resulted from no secret formula that died with the discoverer. Half of Dana’s victory came by his attraction to himself of men who saw life and literature as he saw them; and so, in a magnificent way, he had made his work dispensable.

And Dana’s was always the magnificent way. To him journalism was not a means of making money, but of interesting, elevating, and making happy every one who read the _Sun_ or wrote for it. He raised his profession to new heights. As Hazeltine wrote in the _North American Review_:

One of Mr. Dana’s special titles to the remembrance of his
fellow workers in the newspaper calling is the fact that,
more than any other man on either side of the Atlantic, he
raised their vocation to a level with the legal and medical
professions as regards the scale of remuneration. He honored
his fellow craftsmen of the pen, and he compelled the world to
honor them.

Shortly after the death of his father, Paul Dana, who was then forty-five years old, and who had been on the _Sun_ editorial staff for seventeen years, was made editor by vote of the trustees of the Sun Printing and Publishing Association. In the following year (1898) the younger Dana bought from Thomas Hitchcock, who was one of Charles A. Dana’s associates both in a financial and in a literary way, enough shares to give him the control of the paper.

Paul Dana continued in control of the property for several years and held with credit his father’s title of editor until 1903. William Mackay Laffan, who had been associated with the elder Dana since 1877, next obtained the business control. His proprietorship was announced on February 22, 1902, and it continued until his death in 1909.[A]

[A] The following editorial article appeared in the _Sun_ on
July 26, 1918:

“Mr. Paul Dana calls the _Sun’s_ attention to what he
claims was an error in ‘The Story of the _Sun_’ as it
originally appeared in the _Munsey Magazine_: the statement
that ‘he [Mr. Dana] continued in control of the property
until 1900.’ Mr. Dana states that he did not dispose of
his controlling interest until 1902. The statement in the
_Munsey Magazine_ publication of ‘The Story of the _Sun_’
was founded upon the International Encyclopædia’s biography
of William M. Laffan and also upon a statement published in
the _Sun_ at the time of Mr. Laffan’s death in 1909, that
Mr. Laffan obtained the control of the _Sun_ in 1900. When
the _Munsey Magazine_ articles were reprinted in the Sunday
_Sun_ the paragraph referred to by Mr. Dana was changed to
read as follows:

“‘Paul Dana continued in control of the property for
several years and held with credit his father’s title of
editor until 1903. William Mackay Laffan, who had been
associated with the elder Dana since 1877, obtained the
business control. His proprietorship was announced on
February 22, 1902, and it continued until his death in
1909.’

“We will let Mr. Dana’s version of this matter stand in
‘The Story of the _Sun_’ unless some further evidence
appears on the disputed point.”

Among the makers of the _Sun_ who best knew the paper and the intellectual demands of its readers, Laffan must be included with Dana and Mitchell. At the time when he came to be master of the paper, his career had covered the entire journalistic field, and he was, moreover, a thorough _Sun_ man, sympathetic with all the ideals of his old friend Dana.

Laffan, who was born in Dublin, Ireland, and had a light and delightful brogue, was educated at Trinity College and at St. Cecilia’s School of Medicine. When he was twenty he went to San Francisco, where, beginning as a reporter, he became city editor of the _Chronicle_ and managing editor of the _Bulletin_. In 1870 he went to Baltimore, to be a reporter on the _Daily Bulletin_, and of this newspaper he became editor and part owner. Eventually he became the full owner of both the _Daily Bulletin_ and the _Sunday Bulletin_, and in this capacity he endeared himself to the citizens of Baltimore by his fight against political rings.

He left newspaper work for a short time to become general passenger-agent of the Long Island Railroad; but in 1877, on Mr. Dana’s invitation, he went on the _Sun_ as a general writer. Himself an artist who modelled in clay, painted in oils and water-colours, and etched, his judgment made him valuable to the paper as an art critic.

Like Mr. Dana, he was interested in Chinese porcelains, and he made a deeper study of them than did his employer. When a catalogue was needed for the Chinese porcelains in the Morgan collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mr. Laffan, who was an active trustee of the museum, was called upon to edit the work. He also edited a book on “Oriental Porcelain.” He was the author of “American Wood Engravers,” published in 1883. For these things he is remembered in the world of art. The men of the stage remember him as one of the most distinguished dramatic critics that New York has seen. Even to-day, in the comparison of the styles of critics old and new, Laffan’s incisive reviews are recalled as standards.

In the business world of journalism Laffan is thought of chiefly as the publisher of the _Sun_ from 1884 on, and as the live spirit of the _Evening Sun_ for many of its years. As the actual director of the _Sun_--although his editorial powers were almost entirely delegated to Mr. Mitchell--Mr. Laffan was a picturesque and powerful figure. Beneath an inscrutable exterior he was distinctly a likable person.

One day Laffan wrote a ten-line item, a bit about an exhibition of a friend’s painting, and asked the city editor to print it. He never commanded, even when he controlled the paper; he asked. The item was lost in the shuffle that night. The next day he rewrote it and again asked a place for it. It was printed in the first edition and left out of the city edition. For the third time he carried the article to the city editor, and without a sign of anger.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that anybody can get anything printed in this paper--except the owner.”

A millionaire advertiser asked Laffan to print an article about his pet charity.

“Take it to Clarke,” said Laffan. “If he’ll print it for you, he’ll do more for you than he’ll do for me.”

A New York newspaper once remarked of Laffan that “he never drove any man to drink, but he drove many a man to the dictionary.” That was a commentary on the unusual words which Laffan, whose vocabulary was wide, would occasionally use in an editorial article. His articles were never involved, however. They were not frequent, they were generally short, never without important purpose, and they drove home.

Patient as Laffan was with lost items of his own, he was a man of fine human temper. One morning, on arriving at the office, he found that a Wall Street group of rich scoundrels had sued the _Sun_ for several hundred thousand dollars for its exposure of their methods. He called the city editor.

“Mr. Mallon,” he said, “tell your young man who wrote the articles to go ahead and give these men better cause for libel suits!”

The _Sun_ was making a vigorous war on a great railroad magnate. One day an attaché of the office informed Laffan that a man was waiting to see him who bore a contract which would bring to the _Sun_ four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of advertising from the magnate’s railroads.

“Tell him to see the advertising manager,” said Laffan.

“He insists on seeing you,” said the clerk.

“Tell him to go to hell,” said Laffan.

There was a keen humour in the big Irish head. Laffan was opposed to the amendment to the New York State constitution which provided for an expenditure of more than a hundred millions in improving the Erie Canal. Under his direction a _Sun_ reporter, John H. O’Brien, wrote a series of articles intended to shatter public faith in the huge investment. The amendment, however, was approved by a great majority.

“Mr. O’Brien,” said Mr. Laffan to the reporter, a few days after the election, “I think it would be a very graceful thing on your part to give a little dinner to all those gentlemen who voted against the canal project.”

Upon Mr. Laffan’s death, in November, 1909, the trustees of the Sun Printing and Publishing Association asked Mr. Mitchell, who had been made editor of the _Sun_ on July 20, 1903, to take up the administrative burden as well as the editorial. This Mr. Mitchell did for a little more than two years, although his personal inclinations were toward the literary construction and supervision of the paper rather than toward the business detail incident to the presidency of so large a corporation. The double load was lightened in December, 1911, when control of the _Sun_ was gained through stock purchase by William C. Reick, who became the president of the company, Mr. Mitchell being permitted to return to the editorial functions which have now engrossed him, either as Mr. Dana’s aid or as editor-in-chief, for more than forty years.

EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL
Editor of “The Sun”
]

Mr. Reick, who was born in Philadelphia in 1864, entered newspaper work in that city when he was nineteen years old. A few years later he removed to Newark, New Jersey, where he became the correspondent of the New York _Herald_. He attracted the attention of Mr. Bennett, the owner of the _Herald_, and in 1888 he was made editor of the _Herald’s_ London and Paris editions. A year later he returned to America to become city editor of the _Herald_, the highest title then given on a newspaper which refuses to have a titular managing editor. In 1903 he was elected president of the New York Herald Company, and he remained in that position until 1906, when he left the _Herald_ to become associated with Adolph Ochs in the publication of the New York _Times_ and with George W. Ochs in the publication of the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_.

When Mr. Reick assumed the control of the _Sun_ properties, he devoted much care to the improvement of the _Evening Sun_, putting it under the managing editorship of George M. Smith, who had served for many years as news editor of the _Sun_ under Chester S. Lord. As Mr. Munsey said when he acquired the _Sun_ and the _Evening Sun_ from Mr. Reick:

Very great credit is due Mr. Reick for the fine development of
the _Evening Sun_ since it came under his control. I know of no
man who has done a better and sounder piece of newspaper work
at any time, in New York or elsewhere, than Mr. Reick has done
on the _Evening Sun_.

Among the events of the Reick régime were the retirement of Chester S. Lord from the managing editorship and of George B. Mallon from the city editorship, and the removal of the newspaper from its old home at Nassau and Frankfort Streets to the American Tract Society Building, one block farther south, at Nassau and Spruce Streets.

It was during Mr. Reick’s control of the _Sun_ that Mr. Munsey, in the autumn of 1912, bought the New York _Press_, a one-cent Republican morning daily holding an Associated Press membership. The _Sun_ had lacked the Associated Press service since the fateful night when Mr. Dana bolted from that organization and started the Laffan News Bureau.

Mr. Munsey bought the _Sun_ from Mr. Reick on June 30, 1916, and four days later, on July 3, the _Press_, with its Associated Press service, its best men, and some of its popular features, was absorbed by the _Sun_. As the _Press_ had been a penny paper, the price of the _Sun_ was reduced to one cent, after having stood at two cents since the Civil War. It remained a penny paper until January 26, 1918, when the pressure of production-costs forced the price of all the big New York dailies to two cents.

The amalgamation of the _Sun_ and the _Press_ wrought no change in the editorial department of the _Sun_, Mr. Mitchell remaining as its chief. Ervin Wardman, long the editor of the _Press_, became the publisher of the Sun and vice-president of the Sun Printing and Publishing Association. Mr. Reick remained with the organization in an advisory capacity. Keats Speed, the managing editor of the _Press_, became managing editor of the _Sun_, Kenneth Lord remaining as city editor.

The _Sun_ has had five homes--at 222 William Street, where Benjamin H. Day struck off the first tiny number; at 156 Nassau Street, rented by Day in August, 1835, when the paper began to pay well; at the southwest corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets, to which Moses Y. Beach moved the _Sun_ in 1842; at Nassau and Frankfort Streets, the old Tammany Hall, which Dana and his associates bought; and at 150 Nassau Street, whither the _Sun_ moved in July, 1915. It is expected that the _Sun_ will presently move to another and a fine home, for in September, 1917, Mr. Munsey bought the Stewart Building, at the northeast corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, just north of City Hall Park. The site is generally admitted to be the most desirable building site downtown, so large is the ground space, so fine is the outlook over the spacious park, and so close is it to three subways, three or four elevated-railroad lines, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Should the criticism be made that this book is not all-inclusive, let it be remembered that there can be no really complete history of the _Sun_ except itself--the tons of files in which for eighty-five years _Sun_ men have drawn their pictures of life’s procession. In a narrative like this only the outlines of the _Sun’s_ course, margined with incidents of the men who made it great by making it as human as themselves, can find room.

It is easy to begin a story of the _Sun_, because Ben Day and that uncertain morning in 1833, the very dawn of popular journalism, make a very real picture. Try to end it, and the roar of the presses in the basement is remindful of the fact that there is no end, except the arbitrary closing. This _Sun_, like _Richmond’s_--

By the bright track of his fiery car
Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The files of the _Sun_, 1833–1918.

“The Life of Charles A. Dana,” by James Harrison Wilson, LL.D., late Major General, U. S. V. Harper & Bros., 1907.

“Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872,” by Frederic Hudson. Harper & Bros., 1873.

“The Art of Newspaper Making,” by Charles A. Dana. D. Appleton & Co., 1895.

“Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press for Thirty Years,” by Augustus Maverick. A. S. Hale & Co., Hartford, Conn., 1870.

“First Blows of the Civil War,” by James S. Pike. American News Co., 1879.

“Ordered to China; Letters of Wilbur J. Chamberlin.” Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1903.

“The Making of a Journalist,” by Julian Ralph. Harper & Bros., 1903.

“Mr. Dana of the _Sun_,” by Edward P. Mitchell. _McClure’s Magazine_, October, 1894.

“The New York _Sun_,” by Will Irwin. _American Magazine_, January, 1909.

“The Men Who Make the New York _Sun_,” by E. J. Edwards. _Munsey’s Magazine_, October, 1893.

CHRONOLOGY

1833.--The _Sun_ is founded by Benjamin H. Day, September 3.

1835.--Its home is changed from 222 William street to 156 Nassau
street, August 3.

1835.--The Moon Hoax appears, August 25.

1838.--Moses Yale Beach becomes proprietor, June 28.

1842.--The _Sun_ moves to the southwest corner of Fulton and Nassau
streets, July.

1844.--Poe’s Balloon Hoax appears, April 3.

1845.--M. Y. Beach takes his sons, Moses S. and Alfred E., as
partners, October 22.

1848.--Moses Yale Beach retires, December 4.

1852.--Alfred Ely Beach retires, April 6.

1860.--Moses S. Beach lets the _Sun_ to a religious group, August 6.

1861.--The _Sun_ returns to the management of M. S. Beach, January 1.

1864.--The price is raised to two cents, August 1.

1868.--Charles A. Dana becomes the editor and manager of the _Sun_,
January 25.

1868.--The _Sun_ moves to 170 Nassau street, January 25.

1875.--Edward P. Mitchell joins the editorial staff, October 1.

1897.--Death of Charles A. Dana, October 17.

1902.--William M. Laffan’s proprietorship is announced, February 22.

1903.--Edward P. Mitchell becomes the editor of the _Sun_, July 20.

1909.--Death of William M. Laffan, November 19.

1911.--William C. Reick becomes proprietor, December 17.

1915.--The _Sun_ moves to 150 Nassau street, July 11.

1916.--Frank A. Munsey becomes proprietor, June 30.

1916.--With the _Sun_ is amalgamated the New York _Press_, July 3.

1916.--The price is reduced to one cent, July 3.

1918.--The price again becomes two cents, January 26.

INDEX

Abell, Arunah S., associate of Day, 23
establishes Baltimore _Sun_, 136
buys Guilford estate, 136
helps S. F. B. Morse, 136
death of, in 1888, 136

Abolition of slavery, article on, 54
Wisner’s editorial on, 42

Actors of the early 30’s, 121

Adams, Cyrus C., cable editor, 394

Adamson, Robert, _Evening Sun_ reporter, 399

Adams, Samuel Hopkins, Dana finds it hard to discharge, 378, 379
writes Sunday _Sun_ fiction, 412

Adams, Samuel, murdered by John C. Colt, 154

“Addition, Division, and Silence,” 305, 306

Advertising, fashions of, in 1833, 26
specimens of early “liners,” 125
the _Sun_ takes off the first page in 1862, 189
the _Sun_, under Morrison, refuses advertisements on Sunday, 190

Alamo massacre, 113

Alexander, Columbus, escape of, in the Safe Burglary Conspiracy, 308,
309

Alger, Horatio, Jr., writes fiction for the _Sun_, 195

Allen, Miss Susan, smokes a cigar on Broadway, 45

Alumni, of the _Sun_, 328

Anderson, Harold M., Spanish war correspondent, 355, 356

Arago, D. F., alleged deception of, by the Moon Hoax, 97–99

Armstrong, Henry M., Spanish war correspondent, 356

Associated Press, Dana’s break with, 374
formed in _Sun_ office, 167

Astor House, 49

Astor, William B., New York’s richest man, 234

Attree, William H., 61–62
reporter on the _Transcript_, 133, 134

Aviation, prophetic editorial comment on, 46

“Azamet Batuk.” See Thiéblin, N. L.

Badeau, General Adam, a _Sun_ contributor, 404

Ballard, Anna, reporter, 286

Balloon Hoax, Poe’s, referred to by De Morgan, 98

Bartlett, Willard, dramatic critic, counsel for Dana, editorial
contributor, 286
invents the _Sun_ Cat, 287

Bartlett, William O., writes “No king, no clown, to rule this town!”,
255
style of, compared with Dana’s and Mitchell’s, 256
reference of, to General Hancock’s weight, 256
counsel for Tweed, 275

Battey, Emily Verdery, first real woman reporter, 285, 286
appears in the _Sun_ on April 13, 1844, 149–153

Beach, Alfred Ely, becomes partner in the _Sun_, 161, 162
invents first typewriter for the blind, 162
builds first New York subway, 162, 163
withdraws from the _Sun_ April 6, 1852, 171
dies in 1896, 163

Beach Brothers, name of ownership, 170, 171
issue _Evening Sun_, 171

Beach, Erasmus D., book reviewer, 349
writes classic football story, 350

Beach, Frederick Converse, 163

Beach, Joseph, son of Moses Y. Beach, 173

Beach, Moses Sperry, becomes a partner in the _Sun_, 161, 162
part owner Boston _Daily Times_, 162
invents printing devices, 162
becomes sole owner of the _Sun_, 171
brings wood from the Mount of Olives for Beecher’s pulpit, 177
absence of, from the _Sun_ in the early months of the Civil War, 189
takes the _Sun_ back, 191
sells the _Sun_ to Dana, 198, 199
bids readers farewell, 200

Beach, Moses Yale, enters _Sun_ office as bookkeeper, 111
buys the _Sun_, 127
youth and marriage of, 139
inventions of, 140
joins Benjamin H. Day, 140
owns two buildings where the _Sun_ had its home, 157
takes sons as partners, 161
enterprise of, in Mexican War, 164, 165
starts for Mexico as President Polk’s special agent, 166
retires from the _Sun_, 167
dinner in his honour, 167
issues various editions of the _Sun_, 169
publishes “The Wealth of New York,” 169
father of the newspaper syndicate, 169
Dana’s estimate of, 169, 170
amasses a fortune and retires, 170
writes European articles for the _Sun_, 173

Beach, Stanley Yale, 163

Becker, Charles, conviction of, reported by E. C. Hill, 320, 321

Beckwith, Arthur, telegraph editor, 280

Beecher, Henry Ward, John Brown speech of, in the _Sun_, 177
tribute to H. B. Stanton, 259
trial of, 278
“I don’t read the _Sun_,” 310
denounced by the _Sun_, 311

Belknap, William W., accused by the _Sun_ in Post-trader scandal and
impeached, 306, 307

Bell, Jared D., part owner, _New Era_, 134

Bendelari, George, book-reviewer, 411

Bennett, James Gordon, thrashed by Col. Webb, 36
work of, for the _Courier and Enquirer_, 37
editor Philadelphia _Courier_, 53
the _Sun_ replies to charge of, that Day is an infidel, 108
early career of, 109
treats Helen Jewett’s murder sensationally, 114
second assault on, by Webb described, 114
early failures of, 131
debt of, to Day’s example, 132
announcement of coming marriage of, 132
establishes the no-credit system, 133
works harder than other proprietors, 174
dies in 1872, 293
“the first yellow journalist,” 413

Bennett, J. G., Jr., takes his father’s place, 298
death of, 132

Bigelow, John, associate of Bryant, 174

Bishop, Joseph W., night city editor, 372
night editor, 372

Black, Chauncey F., a _Sun_ contributor, 405

Blackwood, Algernon, _Evening Sun_ reporter, 399

Blatchford, Judge Samuel, historic decision of, in the Shepherd case,
307, 308

Blizzard of March, 1888, 362, 363

Blythe, Samuel G., describes E. G. Riggs, 346

Bogart, John B., “If a man bites a dog, that is news,” 241
“a whole school of journalism,” 281
possesses “sixth sense,” 335, 336
persistence of, 336

Bonner, Robert, pays $30,000 for “Norwood,” 235
sagacity of, commented on by Dana, 300

Book-reviewers, _Sun’s_, list of, 411

Borden, Lizzie, acquittal of, reported by Julian Ralph, 318, 319

Bowery Theatre Fire, ruins Hamblin, 118
first American playhouse lighted with gas, 121

Bowles, Samuel, employs B. H. Day, 22–23

Bowman, Frank, dramatic critic, 411

Bread riots, the _Sun’s_ part in, 118, 119

Brewster, Sir David, appears in Moon Hoax, 71

Brisbane, Albert, association of, with Greeley, 161

Brisbane, Arthur, son of Albert Brisbane, 161
style of, like W. O. Bartlett’s, 256
becomes reporter at 18, 346, 347
becomes London correspondent, 347
reports Sullivan-Mitchell fight, 347
is managing editor _Evening Sun_, 348
becomes editor Sunday _World_ magazine, 348
becomes editor _Evening Journal_, 348
becomes proprietor Washington _Times_, 348
takes Richard Harding Davis on _Evening Sun_, 398

Brook Farm, Dana enters, 206

Brooklyn Theatre fire, 362

Brooks brothers, James and Erastus, establish New York _Express_,
134, 135

Brown, John, the _Sun’s_ attitude toward, 177

Bryant, William Cullen, editor and poet in 1833, 34
conflict of, with W. L. Stone, 34

Buchanan, James, supported by the _Sun_, 176

Burdell, Dr. Harvey, murder of, 196

Burnett, Wm., 60

Burr, Aaron, 51

Butler, Stephen B., 60

Cady, Elizabeth, marries Henry B. Stanton, 259

Caroline case, the _Sun’s_ enterprise in reporting, 144, 145

Carroll, Dana H., Spanish war correspondent, 355

Cat, the _Sun’s_, his invention and reputation, 287–289

Chadwick, George W., in business with Dana, 216

Chamberlains and Chamberlins, 341–343

Chamberlain, Henry Richardson, covers Europe for the _Sun_, 342
visions by, of a great war, 342

Chamberlin, Wilbur J., takes charge of the _Sun_ staff in Cuba, 356
eleven-column report by, 361
known as “Jersey,” 338;
cable hoodoo of, 339, 340
describes German soldiers’ brutality in China, 340
describes the Deacon’s broken suspenders, 341

Chamberlin, E. O., reporter, 342

Chamberlin, Henry B., reporter, 343

Childs, George W., tells of W. M. Swain’s industry, 135
buys _Public Ledger_, 135

Cholera, in New York, 1832, 22

Church, Francis P., a _Sun_ editorial writer for forty years, 191
“Is There a Santa Claus?,” 409

Church, William C., publisher of the _Sun_, 190
war correspondent, 190, 191
owns _Army and Navy Journal_, 191

Circulation in November, 1833, 2,000, 50
in December, 1833, 52
April, 1834, 54
in November, 1834, 57
Day offers to bet on it, 62–63
in August, 1835, it becomes the largest in the world, 78
in August, 1836, 27,000, 116
in September, 1843, 38,000, 157
in December, 1848, 50,000, 168
in September, 1860, 59,000, 194
Dana’s estimate of 50,000 to 60,000 in 1868, 228
in 1871, 100,000, 269
in March, 1875, 120,000, 300
day after Tilden-Hayes election, 220, 390, 323, 325
after other interesting events, 323–325
high-tide marks, 325

Civil War, the _Sun_ in the, 172 _et seq._
the _Sun_ declares “the Union cannot be dissolved,” 179
the _Sun_ charges the _Herald_, the _Daily News_, and the
_Staats-Zeitung_ with disloyalty, 180, 181
the _Sun_, the _Tribune_, and the _Times_ entirely loyal, 185
the _Sun’s_ news from Bull Run, 187;
from Gettysburg, 188
the _Sun_ protests against Sunday battles, 190
attitude of Greeley and Dana, 211

Clarke, Selah Merrill, night city editor, 1881–1912, 383
story of the Northampton disaster by, 383
remarkable memory of, 384, 385
head-lines written by, 387, 388
gifts of, as copy reader, 389

Cleveland, Grover, Dana’s opposition to, 421, 422

Clubs: Bread and Cheese, Hone, Union, 122, 123

Cobb, Irvin S., reports Portsmouth peace conference for _Evening
Sun_, 399

Coffey, Titian J., recipient of the “addition, division, and silence”
letter, 305

Collins, E. K., an advertiser in the first _Sun_, 27

Colt, John C., murders Samuel Adams, 154

Conkling, Roscoe, in business with Dana, 216

Connolly, James, reporter, 284

Conventions, national, _Sun_ men reporting, 344
history of, written by E. G. Riggs, 346

Cook, Tom, reporter, 284

Cooper, Charles P., city editor, _Evening Sun_, 400

Cooper, James Fenimore, 50

Corbin, John, dramatic critic, 411

Coward, Edward Fales, _Evening Sun_ dramatic critic, 399

Crédit Mobilier scandal, 304

Crockett, David, memoirs of, in the _Sun_, 51

Cronyn, Thoreau, Dewey’s funeral, report by, 333

Cuba, Dana’s interest in struggle of, 353–355

Cullen, Clarence L., writes “Tales of the Ex-Tanks,” 411

Cummings, Alexander, writes for the _World_, 182

Cummings, Amos Jay, secretly learns typesetting, 264
goes with Filibuster Walker, 265
wins Medal of Honor at Fredericksburg, 265
holds _Tribune_ office against rioters, 266
conflicts with John Russell Young, 266
“They say I swear too much,” 267
“To hell with my own copy,” 267
best news man of his day, 268
is first human interest reporter, 268
reports prize fights, 285
Nicara-goo Song of, 289, 290
“Ziska” letters of, 290
is managing editor of the _Express_, 290
returns to the _Sun_, 290
is elected to House of Representatives, 290
becomes editor _Evening Sun_, 290
returns to Congress, 290, 291
death and funeral of, 291
prints murder charts, 414

Curtin, Jeremiah, a _Sun_ contributor, 404

Curtis, David A., Sunday _Sun_ writer, 412

Curtis, George Ticknor, a _Sun_ contributor, 404

Curtis, George William, writes for the _Tribune_, 161

Daly, Augustin, tries to have Dana dismiss Laffan, 252

Damrosch, Leopold, music critic, 314